As I Am

by A. M. Arthur

  He picked up the phone and called Jennifer.

  Chapter One

  Sixteen months later

  Will Madden tore through the front door of Carter House, gave a cursory glance at the two shapes in the living room—Natasha and Cherie were watching something on the ancient television—and made a mad dash for the stairs. His chest hurt, his lungs weren’t working right, and he was teetering on the edge of a full-on panic attack. He needed to get to his room at the halfway house before he fell into it completely.

  He hated having attacks in public. Or even in the living room where the other residents could see it. Mostly they didn’t care. Natasha had anxiety issues too. But Will cared. The attacks made him look weak, vulnerable.

  Three rooms upstairs, plus the shared bathroom. His was at the end of the hall, tiny, barely more than a glorified closet, but it was his own room. It didn’t have a lock. None of the doors did (house rules), but no resident was allowed to enter another resident’s room without permission (another house rule). Only the two social workers who ran the place were allowed in the rooms, but only if they suspected trouble. Like drugs or alcohol. Those got you tossed out, period.

  Will had never tasted alcohol, and his one experience with drugs had been neither fun nor exactly his choice, so no thanks. He had enough trouble remembering to take his prescription meds.

  He pushed his bedroom door open and then shoved it closed when he was on the other side. He soaked in the familiar smell of his spray deodorant. Bright afternoon light reflected off white walls made the shoe box feel bigger. A bed and dresser were the only furniture.

  The size was worth it for the privacy.

  Will sat on his narrow bed directly under the curtainless window and dropped his head between his knees. Pulled a deep breath in through his nose. Pushed it out through his mouth.

  I see the moon and the moon sees me. The moon sees the somebody I’d like to see.

  Some of the pressure in his chest eased as he pulled on the familiar nursery rhyme.

  God bless the moon and God bless me. God bless the somebody I’d like to see.

  More pressure went away. The cold panic that had settled in his gut earlier in the day began to thaw.

  I see the moon and the moon sees me. I see the moon and the moon sees me.

  Deeper breaths eased into regular ones. He sat up, glad to have warded this one off before it consumed him. So stupid. Stupid-ass thing to get so worried about, anyway.

  He heard his shrink’s voice in the back of his head, asking the familiar chestnut “Why do you feel stupid?”

  “Normal people don’t panic at being assigned to a fund-raiser’s setup team,” he told the wall, since his shrink wasn’t in the room. His appointment was tomorrow, so yeah, he’d have to bring this up. Dr. Taggert didn’t like it when Will kept his attacks to himself.

  And it wasn’t so much the fund-raiser itself. He’d helped on a bunch in the almost year he’d volunteered for Sam Hartley at the Stanley Center. It got him out into the world a few days a week and made him confront his PTSD-related anxiety head-on.

  He curled up beneath the window and tried to figure out what about this fund-raiser had sent him into a blind panic the moment he left the office. It was for an LGBT teen homeless shelter they’d worked with last fall. All Saints House. The Stanley Center wasn’t involved directly, but Sam wanted Will to be available to Jonas Ashcroft on setup day, since this was Jonas’s first time coordinating a benefit by himself. Jonas had filled in as a temporary full-time assistant this past winter, so Sam had a soft spot for him. Will had been sad to see Jonas leave.

  Jonas.

  That’s why the panic. Jonas didn’t frighten him. Total opposite. Jonas was model gorgeous with dark hair and piercing eyes, and he smelled fantastic. Will’s stomach wobbled as that panic tried to come back. Working around Jonas again, even for only eight hours total, terrified him, because he’d been attracted to Jonas from the instant he’d walked into Sam’s office asking to volunteer last fall. He’d silently yearned for someone like Jonas to say his name the same loving way Jonas said Tate’s.

  Not that he ever had or ever would say anything about his stupid crush. Jonas had Tate, and even if he didn’t, no one wanted a hot mess like Will. No one ever would. He’d resigned himself to that after Guy. Fast, sweaty fucks were all he got.

  Except he wasn’t even supposed to have that anymore. Not for a while, thanks to his shrink.

  I wonder if Taz is online.

  The therapy-induced restriction on anonymous hookups had been the catalyst for Will’s newfound obsession with online chat rooms. A few weeks ago he’d signed up for several, unsure what he was looking for. Some of the rooms were for guys looking to hook up. Some were strictly chat only, and Will had gravitated toward those to avoid temptation. About two weeks ago he’d struck up a conversation with a guy whose handle was TazManicDevil, which he thought was hilarious. Last week he’d admitted his nickname was Taz and that Will could call him that.

  Will’s handle was WillHeWontHe, so he’d told Taz to call him Will. They’d bonded over having PTSD—although neither had confided why—and how it restricted their abilities to move around in the world. Taz made him laugh when few other things did. He was only pixels on a screen, but in some ways, he was the only friend Will had. And he also lived in Wilmington, which made Taz seem even more real to him.

  He dug his refurbished laptop out from under the mattress and plugged it in. The stupid thing would run for maybe ten whole minutes without being connected to the wall outlet, but it did its job of getting him online and providing him some ability to interact with the world. Plus he’d saved up and bought it himself. He was proud of it, from its bad battery life to the crack on the top cover.

  Taz had admitted to working from home—lucky him—which meant he was online a lot. Almost every time Will logged in, he saw Taz’s handle, even if he was idling and not currently active. Will waited for his laptop to connect to the house’s Wi-Fi, then opened his browser. Last week he’d set his homepage to this chat room.

  TazManicDevil. Idle mode.

  Will poked him. Dude.

  He waited, declining two requests to private message with other people.

  Taz went active. Hey. You work today?

  Will’s heart did a funny flip. Yeah. Just got home. You?

  Finished about an hour ago. Was watching TV.

  Anything good?

  Nah. Mostly waiting for you to get online.

  He grinned at the screen, strangely happy over the idea that Taz had been waiting for him to chat. Here now.

  Yup. How was work?

  Usual, aside from working through a panic attack.

  ??!! What happened?!!?

  The instant concern knocked away the tiny fear that confiding in Taz was the wrong thing. His own obnoxious habit of second-guessing every decision in his personal life.

  Assigned to a new fund-raiser for this weekend. Shouldn’t be a big deal, but people, you know? One on one is okay, but groups freak me out.

  I get it, trust me.

  I know you do. And I know the guys I’ll be working w/ but still. It’s scary.

  Can’t keep an eye on or control a crowd.

  Exactly!

  Christ, but Will loved having someone in his life who got it. Who didn’t question him or second-guess him or tell him to just get over it and try to be normal. But was Taz really in his life? Right now he was only a name on a computer screen. His shrink kept hammering at him to establish relationships with people his own age, to make friends he could spend time with, and he wanted to do that. It was just so damn hard to trust anyone.

  He really, really wanted to be able to trust Taz. To know Taz was real, really understood PTSD, and wasn’t catfishing him for kicks. He needed to know now before he got
too invested.

  Will held his breath as he typed: Can we talk in person?

  Taz was silent for so long that Will’s stomach soured, positive he’d just ended this semifriendship over his stupid need hear a compassionate human voice.

  Never mind, it’s okay, he typed. Send.

  Sorry, you surprised me. Chat only and all.

  I know. Sorry.

  I do want to meet you in person, Will.

  Will smashed down a bloom of hope before it got too big. But?

  An invitation to use the voice chat feature popped up on screen. They’d never done that before. Will clicked on it before Taz changed his mind, eager to know what his friend sounded like.

  “You there?” Taz asked.

  Will closed his eyes and let the warm, deep voice slide over him like hot fudge on a sundae. Smooth and wonderful and stupidly comforting, considering it was coming over his computer’s crappy speakers. “Hi.” He’d kind of squeaked that, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello. Taz?”

  “It’s me. Hi there.”

  “Hi back.” Will dragged a trembling hand through his shaggy hair, glad they weren’t doing a video chat or anything. He didn’t want Taz to see how stupidly nervous he was.

  “This felt easier than typing out a bunch of personal shit,” Taz said. “This okay? Us talking?”

  “Of course.” He’d just asked to meet Taz in person; this was a good compromise. “You sound kind of how I imagined you would.” They hadn’t exchanged good photos—the profile pics on the chat site were obscured for both of them—but the stats made Will want to get under him fast. Six feet, 180, green eyes, ginger. Former college wrestler.

  Yes, please.

  “I do?” Taz asked. “How do I sound?”

  “Strong. Friendly. Do you sing?”

  He chuckled, and that sound skittered down Will’s spine in a nice way. “Not really. My gramma took me to church regularly when I was a kid, so I sang hymns, but it’s not the same.”

  “Oh. You sound like a singer.” Stupid small talk sounded stupid. “So we both want to meet in person, but...?”

  “It’s why I’ve got the PTSD shit to deal with.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Didn’t sharing personal shit require tit for tat? Will didn’t want to dig into his own issues, especially not over a voice chat.

  “Except I kind of do, if we’re going to meet. It’s not something I can hide on the outside, and I should warn you anyway so you don’t freak out.”

  Will snorted. “I just freaked out over doing a fund-raiser with people I know. Hit me.”

  “I’ve got scars. Bad ones.”

  “Okay.”

  Taz paused. “They’re on my neck and the left side of my face. Acid burns.”

  Surprise jolted through him. “Acid? Shit, are they healed?”

  “Yeah. It was two years ago. The doctors, they did some skin grafts, but you can still see how it doesn’t look right. It’s all waxy and discolored.”

  “That’s...” He had no words for the shock and anger rolling around inside him. Shock because acid burns. Anger because even though he didn’t know Taz well, he hated the idea of someone hurting him like that. “How’d you get burned with acid?”

  “It was back at college. Jealous, bigoted fucktard who didn’t like that I was bi and openly dating a dude.”

  “Christ, Taz. Was the fucktard arrested?”

  “Yeah. Plea deal. Got twelve months and a day. Two years’ probation.”

  “That’s not fair!” Will grabbed hold of his temper before he shouted again. Last thing he needed was someone coming to see if he was okay. “That’s not enough.” Not for scarring Taz. Not for all the shit that came with PTSD and having to warn a guy before they met in person the first time.

  No amount of prison time was ever enough for ruining someone’s sense of safety and ability to freely move around in the world.

  “It is what it is,” Taz said. “One of the things that helps when I get really down is remembering he’s stuck in Minnesota for another year and a half. The boogeyman can’t get me here.”

  Meanwhile a few of Will’s boogeymen still wandered the streets because they’d never been identified. He’d blocked out a lot of those two years, especially the faces. He didn’t want to see the faces in his nightmares anymore. But the voices.

  He hadn’t forgotten their voices.

  I see the moon and the moon sees me. I see the moon and the moon sees me.

  “Will?”

  He startled at the worried voice from his laptop. “I’m here.”

  “You doing okay with this? Hearing this?”

  “I’m sorry you were hurt.” He chewed at his thumbnail, grateful for the sharp spike of pain he got when he bit at sore flesh too close to the nail. “That’s why you have PTSD?”

  “Yeah. Scared me really bad. It was someone I knew, you know? Plus all the pain afterward. It all jumbled into this big mess in my head.”

  “It was someone I knew, you know?”

  Oh yeah. He knew.

  “A big, jumbled mess that’s so overwhelming it’s easier to ignore it than try to untangle it,” Will said.

  “Exactly. Fuck, dude, are you a shrink in your spare time?”

  Will laughed. “No, but I’ve been in therapy since I was sixteen. Some shit stuck.”

  “And you’re nineteen?”

  “Yeah. Twenty in November.” He could finally leave his shitty teens behind.

  “That’s a lot of therapy.”

  “I have a lot of shit jumbled together.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Therapy?” Will’s mind tried to turn back to that black moment he’d had a year and a half ago. “It’s had some really awful times, but yeah. Therapy saved my life. My doctor’s really good, too. He isn’t just head-shrinking you and plying you with pills; he really gives a damn.”

  “Wish I could afford a therapist like that.”

  Taz sounded so sad that Will wanted to reach through the computer and hug him, and hugging strangers wasn’t usually an impulse he felt. “When I was in foster care, the state paid, but now that I’m over eighteen, he does our sessions super cheap. It was free until I got my income figured out, and then I wanted to pay.”

  He’d needed to pay. To use the money he was getting for something useful besides rent and food.

  “When you say income figured out,” Taz said, “you mean your job? The fund-raiser thing?”

  Shit, he’d said too much. He also didn’t want to lie. Even though he’d graduated from a name on a screen to a name with a voice, Taz was still mostly an unknown. So why the hard-on for honesty?

  He’s the first real friend I’ve had since I was thirteen.

  “No, I volunteer at the Stanley Center,” Will replied, voice a little shaky. He hated telling people about the source of his greatest humiliation. “I get disability.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  That was it?

  He couldn’t see Taz’s face, but he got the impression his expression was as mild as his response. Usually people looked at him like he was some sort of nut job or a liar, because what seemingly healthy nineteen-year-old got disability checks?

  Mental cases who couldn’t hold a dishwashing job for longer than two weeks, that’s who. Dropouts with no diploma, no GED, and no actual work experience. And no fucking way could he put “excels at being fucked up the ass” on a résumé. He’d either get laughed out of the office or bent over the desk.

  No, thank you.

  He wanted to work. He wanted to get a regular job and pay taxes and be a normal human being, like the other people he knew. Sam and Kerry and Jonas and Dr. Taggert and all of their friends and loved ones. Volunteering at the Stanley Center was help
ing by degrees, but he still had a hard time with any task outside the actual office. He’d never attended any of the fund-raisers or community functions he’d helped coordinate or set up. Never seen the results of his own hard work in motion.

  “Will?”

  “Yeah?” Had Taz been talking?

  “You went away again.”

  “Sorry. I do that sometimes. Get caught up in my own head. Used to scare the hell out of my foster mom.”

  “You like your foster mom?”

  Will grinned at his laptop screen. “I do. Did. I was a pretty tough case, and I know I scared her a couple of times with my shit, but she stuck it out. We still keep in touch.”

  “You haven’t talked about what your shit is yet.” The comment was tentative, uncertain, but it hit Will like a brick.

  His entire body went cold. “I, uh...”

  “You don’t need to give me details or anything, I’m sorry. I just... Ballpark? Please?”

  Taz had taken a huge risk in telling him about the acid attack and his scars. Will didn’t want to open a vein over the years he’d lived in complete and utter hell, but he could give Taz something. Something to explain his issues and his inability to work. “When I was younger, I, uh...” He swallowed hard against rising acid. “I was molested for two years.”

  Those six words barely scratched the surface of everything he’d endured, but Taz didn’t need to know. The only person who ever got those words were Dr. Taggert, and half the time it was through written notes, instead of actually speaking them. Things that, even years later, could turn him into a shivering, sobbing, terrified mess in the blink of an eye.

  I see the moon and the moon sees me.

  He clung to Jennifer’s nursery rhyme like a talisman to ward off the demons of his past.

  And Taz hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t even acknowledged he’d heard the confession. Will checked his laptop, but the voice chat was still open. “Taz?”

  “Sorry, just...” He sounded weird. Sharp, gruff. Mad.

  Great, he’d just fucked up his first real friendship in years. Who’d want to keep being friends with a basket case who couldn’t work, and who was as used up and tossed away as Will felt most days? Just like that wrinkled ball of paper.